Why Is Non-US Shipping So Expensive?

Here is a frequently asked question we receive from our friends and collectors outside the USA:

Why Is Non-US Shipping So Expensive?

The answer is really simple, unfortunately: the United States Post Office charges us a lot of money to ship books outside the United States.

An example:Here is a screenshot of the shipping page for a book headed to Canada as charged via our website:

Here is a screenshot of the options we receive when we go to the USPS website, enter the package details manually (size, weight, etc), and select shipping from our warehouse address to that same address in Canada:

We agree 100% with you — we want shipping costs to be less expensive! When our Non-US customers choose not to order due to the high price of postage, that only hurts us and our authors. (And we don’t blame them for their decision — these costs are crazy!)

Sometimes we’re told Amazon.com doesn’t charge nearly as much as we do for shipping. We’re sure they don’t. They’re a billion dollar corporation that ships millions (or billions?) of packages every year. They certainly get the very best rate offered by every vendor they deal with. They may also have distribution facilities in other regions, so they can ship enormous groups of orders via bulk freight to the destination country.

In addition, Amazon could be purposely losing money on the shipping costs, so you’ll return again and again and spend more money on future purchases. (In this case, the reduced shipping would be what is considered a “loss leader” in the retail trade.)

Sometimes we’re told that sellers on eBay charge less for shipping, but in many cases, it turns out they’re sending the book in a small envelope with no packing material, protection, or insurance. We always ship books overseas in boxes with packing material — never in a padded envelope!

Folks have asked if we could try UPS or Fed-Ex for outside the US, and we have experimented with them, but the customers reported being charged additional “handling fees” and “processing fees” in addition to their usual taxes on the delivery. The fees were imposed by the shipping companies and had nothing to do with us or the destination country.

So, in the end, we charge our collectors what we’re charged by the USPS for shipping their package. We cannot, unfortunately, afford to charge less.

We are acutely aware of how the USPS postage rates affect our customers and we do wish there was a better option.

If you live in Europe, we highly recommend you check out the Cemetery Dance titles listed on the PS Publishing website in the UK. Peter Crowther has been a good friend of ours for many years and we’re pleased to send collectors his way. He also publishes many fine books each year.

If you know of a store in Canada or Australia that might like to become the official Storefront for Cemetery Dance Publications in that country, please let us know about them. We’d be happy to discuss the possibilities!